Ceriba
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'Ceriba' by Rhys John Stubbs
I will start by saying this isn’t the song I had set out to write. To be honest, I felt like I had failed when I finally listened back to the finished recording. Last year, in the midst of the pandemic, I wrote a new melody that was uncharacteristically happy. I knew immediately that I wanted to name it Hope (Cerība in Latvian). Listening to the final version of this song I find myself asking where the melody’s warmth has gone. It had subtly turned cold during the writing process, in spite of my best efforts to keep reviving the embers. It now feels fragile, hardly the joyful and triumphant start to the year I had originally envisioned. The composition had proved so challenging that at one point I actually scrapped the song entirely out of desperation. However, upon reflection I realised I may have inadvertently written a truer appraisal of hope than the one I had originally intended. After all, hope does have a melancholic undercurrent: if the world were perfect, we simply wouldn’t need it. To hope things will get better is to acknowledge times are not good. We hope a loved one will get well only when they are sick, and we hope to find strength only when we feel weak. The more our hope is challenged, the more energy it requires to uphold it, so we turn to art, science, friends and family to feed it. Without sustenance hope will simply fade, like a torch whose batteries are dying. But the darker the world gets, the more valuable this light becomes. In the end I’m not really sure I had enough battery left myself to light up anyone’s spirits with this song. It might not be a fanfare ringing in the new year, but it’s sincere. And who knows, maybe it will help vanquish one of your shadows yet. Here’s hoping.
Released 5th February 2021.
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